Social media, increased car connectivity and inbuilt software have changed this, now automotive manufacturers have access to more data than ever before.

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Tech Wire Asia | 21 September, 2018

With these new insights comes new opportunities and added value. In fact, research from SNS Telecom & IT estimates that big data investments in the automotive industry will account for more than US$3.3 billion in 2018 alone.

So, how exactly are car manufacturers utilizing data and to improve their products and shore-up their business models?

Over-the-air updates

Ford and General motors, among others, have said that most of their 2020 car models will be equipped for over-the-air (OTA) updates to fix software glitches, for improved performance and functionality. Many manufacturers are already doing this for certain models.

Enabled by connectivity, OTAs mean manufacturers can allow customers to download software updates, just like they would for their phone or computer, without making a visit to their dealership. OTAs have the potential to save the automotive industry millions of pounds by reducing recalls and in-warranty work.

Similarly, using software and connectivity, manufacturers can monitor how drivers use in-car functions, as well as how they perform, and update, fix or adapt them as necessary.

“Manufacturers can determine what the frequently used features are and put in a hard button instead of the customer needing to dive-down into a menu – this improves the overall driving experience,” says Stephen L. Surhigh, Vice President of Automotive Cloud Services for Harman.

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Improved Manufacturing

Specific data sets can even be fed into the design and manufacturing processes – all the way from early stage research and development to the manufacturing floor – to improve the final product and speed up its development.

“When it comes to product development, data adds speed and accuracy to designs and manufacturing plans: a digital mock-up enables structural tests and reviews before a design hits the real world,” says Hans-Georg Kaltenbrunner, Vice President Manufacturing Industry Strategy, EMEA at JDA, which provides connected supply chain solutions.

“This follows through to production, where data insight is being used to inform sourcing decisions, helping manufacturers to pinpoint the right moment to purchase and ship components. Manufacturers are even using data to ensure shift patterns match demand on the assembly line.”

For example, according to consultancy BearingPoint, analyzing data helped Jaguar Land Rover cut the product lifecycle of one of its vehicle by a year-and-a-half.

Predict Wear and Tear

Using connectivity and in-car data collection, manufacturers can provide predictive maintenance services to customers, warning them of failures before they happen. This service is particularly attractive to companies operating large fleets of cars, such as mobility firms like Uber.

“If a company has a large fleet of vehicles and it is possible to collect data on how those cars wear and tear, that information is highly valuable,” says Xavier Mosquet, a senior partner at The Boston Consulting Group’s automotive sector.

Similarly, as car manufacturers have access to growing data streams, they can look to monetize it by selling all different kinds of data analytics services, such as how to optimize car performance in different climates.

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Increase Mobility Services

Some manufacturers are even working with data companies to help them transition to mobility companies or offer additional services to car fleet customers.

For example, Ford is working with Hortonworks to help the company transition to a car and mobility company.

General Motors last year started offering on subscription the MapAnything app to its GM Fleet customers. The app combines telematics fleet management and customer relationship management software to streamline routes and automate critical business processes.

Overall, big data offers huge potential for car manufacturers now and in the future and although the industry is grappling with changing mindsets, creating better quality data management, sharing, and analytics, many are already utilizing the power of big data, with likely much more to come.

The post Why data is critical to success for car manufacturers appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

A new report, The Online Store of the Future: How to Prepare Your Business and Win, by IGD and The Consumer Goods Forum, speaks to industry experts to reveal what the digital store of the future might look like five years from now.

It highlights five specific areas ripe for transformation.

Personalisation

Consumers are already used to personalized adverts and 77 percent of the report’s survey respondents think almost all digital communication to consumers will be personal in the future.

In particular, AI will ‘unlock personalization’ and allow retailers to anticipate demand.

For example, if a shopper is looking for food for a specific meal, a special occasion or just for that evening, the homepage will display relevant solutions and products.

Case-in-point: Spoon Guru and Tesco are working together to make it easier for shoppers to search for products based on their personal lifestyle and dietary needs.

The technology works by using AI and nutritional expertise to analyze products’ ingredients to curate food preferences.

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Other personalized experiences shoppers will come to expect include tailored promotions, website style and font size – large font for the hard of sight, for example – and voice control.

Stores will act as ‘personal assistants’

Seventy-one percent of respondents think retailers will provide a service that uses data from connected devices to provide personalized recommendations.

For instance, shoppers will be able to subscribe to get certain products regularly delivered. Amazon already offers this service.

Similarly, Platejoy asks shoppers to complete a lifestyle quiz to better understand tastes, preferences and health goals, from which it provides personalized recipes and custom eating plans.

Extending on this idea, the study even suggests that retailers might offer services such as home cleaning and laundry in urbanized areas.

Experiences will be more efficient

Eighty-two percent of survey respondents think grocery service levels will be significantly better than today.

This will be largely due to developments in robotics, such as the picking of products, drones, and autonomous vehicles, meaning an online store can provide more convenient and efficient fulfillment, according to the report.

UK retailer Ocado is one of the most successful online grocery stores. It has achieved this accolade by using robotics, AI and only a few maintenance staff to more efficiently run its warehouses.

Other examples include Amazon Key, which enables unattended home deliveries. And  7FRESH which delivers food within a 5km radius within 30 minutes.

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The gap between on and offline will be bridged

Online and offline grocery shopping are merging, and an online store will be increasingly vital to complement the physical store, according to the report.

This could include, it says, checking real-time availability of products in store before visiting.

Then benefiting from personalized offers when the customer arrives.

And online apps that can help a customer find and pay for products without cash. The Alibaba Hema Supermarket already offers this service.

Kroger has tried to integrate its on and offline presence, allowing customers to shop online and then pick up the goods in-store.

However, according to the report, fifty-three percent of respondents have only just started integrating their online and offline teams.

Online shopping will become ‘invisible’

Maybe in the future, consumers won’t even need to visit an online store to shop. Instead, most of the digital content viewed online will be purchasable, the report suggests.

Fifty-percent of respondents say they are prioritizing development of omnichannel marketing solutions throughout the shopper journey.

US-based Mik Mak, for example, allows users to buy from video content.

The future

Retail is evolving fast and with increasingly smart and interconnected devices, shoppers will inevitably want to shop easier, more conveniently and wherever they are.

However, it is worth noting that the digital world changes quicker than the physical world.

Therefore, as the report states, new generations of shoppers will be more adaptable and more likely to view online ordering as the norm. So, expect transformation to happen, and quickly.

The post How are online retailers transforming themselves? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

In an exclusive interview with TechHQ, Apoorv Saxena, Product Manager for Cloud AI & Google AI discusses how businesses can benefit from NLG:

How is NLG technology most commonly used?

The Google Assistant is an example of NLG in action; for example, how it answers questions about yesterday’s winning soccer team or summarizes the text in an email.

There is also a lot of research being conducted on NLG to generate news articles, especially in the financial services space.

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To date, however, the technology has been most successful with structured data, e.g. summarizing an earnings report based on revenue reported.

From that type of data, NLG can generate a very specific template which says company X released its earnings and surpassed analysts’ predictions by X%.

Another extensive application of NLG is in chatbots.

Essentially, they can be seen as a version of NLG where people, and in this case [Google] customers, are programming the bot to respond to a user’s query in a very specific way.

What challenges does development of the technology present?

NLG is extremely complex, creating a comprehensible narrative around multiple facts is challenging.

The technology has seen great advancements in the last few years but there is still much work to be done, especially around customization and conversation; that is where a lot of the progress will be made over time.

For example, for it to work for customized responses, specific templates need to be created based on new use cases as the complexity increases.

Improving the various tones, emotions, and expressions used in NLG is the next step in research.

A simple question like: “What is the temperature today?” could generate countless versions of the same answer, such as ‘hey the weather is 25 degrees’ and ‘it’s going to get hotter’ or ‘it’s going to be 25 degrees today, no need for an umbrella’.

Enabling conversation is another development challenge for NLG as it adds a layer of complexity which is reasoning and that is essentially not seen as part of NLG.

What are the future applications of NLG?

Like any other AI technology, we predict NLG will improve the productivity and scale of what it can do. Imagine a small business is dealing with a lot of customer queries and they can’t answer them all – with NLG a chatbot can answer these queries.

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This is what we see as augmenting existing human input or improving productivity and allowing businesses to scale significantly.

In some cases, if a customer must wait 15 minutes to speak with an agent they would rather talk to a bot, but if customers can get to a human agent they always prefer to talk to a human. It’s still too early to say how NLG will be used as it is still relatively new.

Compared to other AI technologies, where does this stand in significance and value?

The value of NLG depends on the users being targeted, for example, robotic process automation (RPA) is being widely used in the financial services sector to automate customers onboarding and is very useful in that case but not others.

These powerful technologies are going through a significant upgrade cycle in terms of capabilities and I think customers are still discovering new use cases.

Do businesses need to invest in different AI technologies available or is it better to use them through one simple platform?

Large enterprises who have the capital and the talent will invest in NLG and integrate it into their core products and business processes.

Medium and small businesses will consume NLG, not in its raw form, but will integrate it into another platform.

For instance, almost every SaaS company is investing heavily in integrating AI into their products.

They are doing this to boost their core business processes because it helps them be more productive and improve the customer experience. Our view is that NLG is evolving quickly and there will be a lot more opportunities in the future.

The post What can NLG do for your business? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

In addition to its track and trace abilities, the credibility of which has been backed by major firms such as IBM and global shipper Maersk, blockchain can also help connect customers with a product’s ‘origin story’ and give reassurance of provenance.

Arc-net, for example, is a platform that uses blockchain to form a sequence of events into an immutable chain of custody. It focuses on the food and drink sector where there is an increased demand for high quality, artisanal products.

Last year, the company announced what it called the “world’s first initiative” to track artisanal beer from Ireland Craft Beers on the platform to allow customers to fully trace the product’s ingredients from source.

Using a QR smart code on the beer’s label the customer can access an “online experience” that details how the individual product was made.

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“More than ever, consumers want to know where their food and drink comes from, so capturing and sharing production, process and product data with customers is central to having a brand that is trusted and respected. Consumers want transparency, they want authenticity, and blockchain enables that,” Ireland Craft Beers Co-Founder and Director Liam Brogan said in a press release.

Arc-net, which is partnering with PwC to develop its technology further, has also uniquely marked and authenticated each bottle of Adelphi whisky distillery’s latest Ardnamurchan Distillery limited spirit release.

Buyers of the product receive a certificate of authenticity eliminating the risk of fraudulent substitutions that are known to occur in the GPB5.5 billion whisky and spirit market, according to the company.

Global quality assurance and risk management company DNV GL’s Digital Transformation Director Renato Grottola said blockchain technology could provide a “new digital assurance”.

“It allows you to push traceability of a product much closer to a single item than before. Maybe in the past, a manufacturer was tracing a batch of products in the supply chain but this allows firms to trace a single item at a relatively small cost,” he says.

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DNV GL has partnered with VeChain to use blockchain to improve the transparency of product and supplier information.

It is the quality assurance and product story that offers a “unique selling point”, says Grottola.

“A company can share with the consumer the story of the products and certain aspects of their transformation; this offers a value from a marketing point of view.”

Other companies are investing in this approach. Precious stones retailer De Beers has said it will use a blockchain ledger to track diamonds each time they change hands, starting from the moment they are mined. The firm wants to provide cast-iron guarantees to consumers its diamonds are ethically mined and natural stones, as opposed to synthetic ones. Everledger is doing something similar with diamonds and other commodities.

The word “blockchain” has become an attention-grabbing buzzword that garners publicity in its own right. But the proof of provenance it can provide, especially for products where consumer trust may be lacking, and the customer engagement it affords can give certain products a new advantage in the market by better connecting the end user to the production process.

The post How blockchain can make trade more transparent appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial already owns 40 percent of Ele.me and is now seeking to purchase the remaining 60 percent from current investors, including tech giant Baidu, according to The Financial Times.

Founded in 2008, Ele.me has become one of the biggest food delivery firms in China. Alibaba’s attempt to purchase the start-up shows the conglomerate is trying to increase its dominance in the food and delivery market in the country.

According to the China Cuisine Association, an industry group, China’s food delivery market was valued at CNY204.6 billion (US$32.5 billion) in 2017.

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It’s unclear what exactly Alibaba will pay for Ele.me but, according to The Strait Times, the firm was valued at between US$5.5 billion to US$6 billion in a May fundraising last year, but The Financial Times says the deal would value the company at $9.5 billion.

If Alibaba buy-out Baidu’s stake in Ele.me, which means “hungry yet?”, it will mean Baidu has exited efficiently from another services sector while Alibaba would become one of China’s most significant players in food delivery. The company’s chief rival would be Meituan Dianping, an online-to-offline platform, which is backed by competitor Tencent.

China’s food delivery market was valued at $32.5b in 2017. Source: Shutterstock

If the deal goes through, it’s thought Baidu will concentrate its efforts on developing new technologies in artificial intelligence and autonomous driving.

Alibaba is seeking to build up its logistics and delivery capacity. But unlike e-commerce rival JD.com the conglomerate does not hire its own delivery staff or infrastructure, like warehouses storing inventory, but instead relies on third-party providers.

Alibaba, Ele.me and Baidu declined to comment to The Financial Times about the acquisition.

The post Alibaba to swallow food take-out app whole appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

“In the future, only three to four vendors can survive, maybe only less than four,” Richard Yu told reporters at of the Mobile World Congress (MWC), as reported by Reuters.

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In the longer term, only a few firms will make enough money to survive, he added, with those with less than 10 percent market share losing money.

“If your market share is less than 10 percent you cannot be profitable. Over at 10 percent, at least, you can break even (and) over 15 percent you can make money,” Yu said.

Some smaller Chinese vendors are already consolidating, and will eventually disappear, due to a lack of resources and investment in research and development, marketing, and branding, added Yu.

Yu presents the new ‘MateBook X Pro’ laptop before the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Feb 25, 2018. Source: Reuters/Albert Gea

After Samsung and Apple, Huawei is the world’s third-largest smartphone maker, with a 10.2 percent market share in the fourth quarter, according to market surveys from IDC and Strategy Analytics.

At the MWC, Huawei launched a new notebook PC and two Android tablets.

According to Yu, Huawei’s smartphone business grew by around 30 percent in 2017 and is expected to flourish further this year. The company has already seen steady growth in January and February so far.

Yu thinks that Huawei could become the second largest smartphone maker in the world, and eventually the largest.

The post Only the strongest in the smartphone sector can dodge consolidation appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

“This is basically a cyberattack by international cybercriminals,” the bank’s CEO N. Kamakodi told Reuters.

The three fraudulent remittances were sent via correspondent banks, to accounts in Dubai, Turkey, and China.

Kamakodi said there was no evidence internal staff was involved, but that it was clear account holders are part of the fraud.

The bank blocked one of the remittances for US$500,000 that was being sent through a Standard Chartered Bank account in New York to a Dubai-based lender and another transfer of EUR300,000 (US$370,110) routed through Frankfurt to Turkey.

Earlier in the week, Punjab National Bank said it had also been the victim of a US$1.7 billion fraud – however, employees of the Bank are believed to be involved in this case.

As a result of the attack, the bank plans to strengthen its internal monitoring systems and is working with authorities to fully investigate the fraud.

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It’s possible that blockchain technology could have prevented the City Union attack.

Other financial institutions, such as Axis Bank and the Saudi Arabian Central Bank, have adopted blockchain technology for payment and remittance related transactions.

The post Hackers transfer out $2m in attack on Indian bank appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

To build the system, Sony will join forces with Daiwa Motor Transportation and five other domestic taxi firms, Reuters reported.

Currently, only professional drivers are allowed to offer taxi services, due to safety concerns. Therefore, so-called “ride-hailing” platforms can only match users to existing taxi services using mobile platforms.

Regulators in Japan have been under pressure to revise these strict rules on taxi-services but haven’t so far.

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Nevertheless, the Japanese ride-hailing market is competitive, with tech firms jostling to carve out a stake.

SoftBank Group Corp and China’s Didi Chuxing recently said they will work together to roll out a taxi matching service in Japan later this year.

Toyota Motor Corp is also seeking an opportunity to invest JPY 7.5 billion (US$68.6 million) in taxi-hailing service JapanTaxi, which was created by Nihon Kotsu – Japan’s largest taxi firm.

JapanTaxi has been in stiff competition with Uber Technologies, which Toyota has also invested in for an undisclosed amount in 2016.

Uber Technologies Inc. market share in Japan is less than one percent of monthly rides in Tokyo, according to reports. The company is said to be meeting with Japanese regulators soon and hopes to expand in the country, as well as in Singapore and other parts of Asia.

The post Sony to build AI-driven ride-hailing app in Japan appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

“Taiwan is probably the only place in the world we could have built this business at the speed we did,” says Jason Gordon, Gogoro’s Vice-President of Communications.

Two and a half years later there are 50,000 Gogoro scooters on Taipei’s road and a battery swapping station roughly every 800m, with around 30,000 exchanges occurring daily.

The concept behind Gogoro is to sell stylish electric scooters where owners pay a monthly subscription to swap batteries on the go. So, no waiting around to charge your battery.

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According to the company, in less than a year, Gogoro riders have displaced 7,741,563 liters of gasoline and reduced CO2 emissions by 16,299 tons.

Gordon says the model worked so well in Taiwan because the supply chain of products and components there is unlike any other – it’s abundant and easy to access.

Furthermore, Taiwanese people are used to adapting to innovation, from consumer electronics to healthcare systems. And, of course, scooter ownership in the country is very high – around one scooter for every adult.

Following on from its success in Taipei, the company has just started a pilot trial in Japan and has launched ride sharing trials in-partnership with COUP in Madrid, Berlin, and Paris.

Blue skies ahead! This week, our partner #Sumitomo announced the pilot of the GoShare #Smartscooter sharing program, coming soon to #Japan… #ScooterSharing #SmartMobility pic.twitter.com/YgmM2g28eI

— Gogoro (@WeAreGogoro) February 2, 2018

But most notably, in 2017 Gogoro received US$300 million in new investments from new partners Al Gore’s Generation investment fund, ENGIE, Temasek, and Japanese Sumitomo.

Many from Gogoro’s executive suite are former HTC executives. Founder Horace Luke was previously the company’s CIO.

So why the leap to clean energy?

“We are technologists,” says Gordon, “We saw this huge issue with urban density and urban transportation and we wanted to leverage our backgrounds and our passion to contribute to society, so we asked: where can technology be utilized in the most transformative and effective way?”

“Money spent on transportation is huge, especially if in South East Asia and India and in the world’s most populated cities there is not really a path to transition to electric,” says Gordon.

The current paradigm for charging electric vehicles doesn’t transfer to scale, according to Gordon, because there are too many vehicles, so too many charge points would be needed. Battery swapping is an alternative to individual charge points, and they are also introducing solar-powered stations.

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“In Southeast Asia, there is a mass of scooters. This is an opportunity to get people off gas and onto electric. We are looking at those densely populated markets to be a driver of the technology,” adds Gordon.

“Even relieving a little bit of the gas from the cities can be really beneficial for health as well as the transportation ecosystem.”

According to Pew Research in 2010, some eight in 10 people in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia reported owning motorcycles, with 60 percent ownership in China, 47 percent in India and 43 percent in Pakistan.

Furthermore, Gordon says the South Asian population is young and ‘large cultural movements start with the youth, whether it be social media, hardware, phones or computers.’

Gogoro scooters are competitive at US$2,500 to US$4,000 for the first scooter model, before subsidies, and the second can potentially be US$1,500 subsidy dependent.

Scooter ownership in the country is very high – around 1 for every adult. Source: Shutterstock

As battery density is expected to double every 10 years, in that time frame it could be possible to get double the duration from the same battery (200km as opposed to 100km at present).

Gogoro was created as a proof of concept to essentially sell battery swapping, says Gordon.

“Our goal is to enable the fast and broad adoption of electric and the positive feedback from the global investment community validates our efforts and lays the groundwork for more innovation to come.”

The company has plans to launch in other cities soon. Gordon says he can’t share where just yet, but mentions that there is broad interest in the technology.

For now, the company wants to remain focused internally.

“As a start-up, it is easy to get sucked into doing too many things, but we want to really consider where and how we go about expanding,” he says.

“Internally we are focused on taking really conscious steps forward and really learning from our experience in Taiwan, so we can best roll out the technology for consumers; we want to demonstrate the value that electric can bring.”

The post Can battery swapping turn Asia green? appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

IS YOUR COUNTRY ON THE CRYPTOCURRENCY MINING MALWARE HITLIST?

Tech Wire Asia | 2 February, 2018

As the company filed a report with regulators on the hacking scandal on Tuesday, a group of 10 cryptocurrency traders said they will file a lawsuit against Coincheck over the handling of the enormous theft.

The claim will be made with the Tokyo District Court over Coincheck’s freezing of cryptocurrency withdrawals, Hiromu Mochizuki, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, told Reuters.

The traders will demand that Coincheck allows them to withdraw cryptocurrencies to wallets, which are folders used to store digital money, outside the exchange, Mochizuki said.

The huge hack on Coincheck last month has highlighted major flaws in Japan’s regulating of cryptocurrency trading. Source: Shutterstock

Coincheck has now allowed withdrawal of yens from its systems but is still keeping in place curbs on cryptocurrency withdrawals.

Mochizuki said the group was considering filing a second lawsuit at the end of the month to claim for damages over the theft.

Meanwhile, The Financial Services Agency that ordered Coincheck to raise its standards also demanded a report on the security of the company’s systems and the measures it will take to prevent something similar happening again.

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The report submitted by Coincheck this week included information on its investigation into the heist and details of steps to bolster its risk management systems, the exchange said in a statement, as reported by Reuters.

The huge hack on Coincheck last month has highlighted major flaws in Japan’s regulating of cryptocurrency trading and raised questions over the country’s dash to oversee the industry as opposed to imposing clampdowns on it, like policymakers in South Korea, China, and India.

The post Coincheck faces heat from regulators and traders appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.